An Industry Spreading Its Wings
David Bohlken needs 750 pounds of milkweed a day, hand harvested and cleaned, to feed his livestock. After his animals mature, the diet changes to watermelon.
Bohlken is a butterfly farmer. His business is among about half a dozen in the United States that raise and sell butterflies to the growing number of butterfly gardens, zoos and educational exhibits around the country.
In all, about $1 billion is spent annually worldwide to purchase butterflies, according to Rick Mikula, who runs Hole-in-Hand Butterfly Farm in Hazleton, Pa., and has written several books about raising butterflies.
“There has been big growth both on the supply and the exhibit end,” agrees Michael Weissmann, who runs the Butterfly Pavilion in Westminster, Colo. His nonprofit insect zoo near Denver exhibits about 1,200 butterflies from nine countries and draws about 240,000 visitors a year.
Butterfly growers in the United States are dwarfed by about two dozen large suppliers in Malaysia, Taiwan, Costa Rica and other foreign countries.
“You’ve got to be a little bit crazy,” said Dan Dunwoody of Butterfly Dan’s in Kissimmee, Fla., one of the larger U.S. suppliers. “You’re dealing with caterpillars who are crawling everywhere. You’re dealing with viruses, predators. It’s endless.”
Bohlken began selling chrysalides--cocoons protecting the animals as they metamorphose from caterpillar into butterfly--about five years ago by mail order through wild bird magazines.
But his business changed when he began selling to zoos and butterfly houses.
“My orders went from three at a time for $15 to 3,000 at a time,” Bohlken said.
That’s when Bohlken, 33, who was staying at home caring for his infant daughter while his wife worked outside the home, realized his lifelong love of butterflies was a good mix with his education as an accountant.
“It has to be run like a business. You have to have the ability to keep up with federal permits, laws,” he said. “The love of bugs will carry you only so far.”
His season begins in March when he heads to Texas and Oklahoma to catch his initial breeding stock--300 to 400 adult monarchs--as they migrate north for the summer.
Each adult lays about 300 eggs, which turn into caterpillars. The caterpillars gorge themselves on milkweed and become pupae encased in cocoons, where the butterfly body forms. The butterfly hatches, eating sugar water, amino acids and fruit for its short life.
The life span of a breeding monarch butterfly is about two weeks, Bohlken said. A monarch that is not actively breeding can live up to six months, he said.
Bohlken lives in St. Paul but raises most of the butterflies at his farm north of St. Croix Falls, Wis. With the help of four employees, he grows 40 acres of milkweed to feed the caterpillars he calls “little eating machines.”
The caterpillars are raised in 32-gallon garbage cans that have to be emptied and sterilized every two days. If the cans aren’t kept clean, mold can grow and cause disease.
When they’re ready to form chrysalides, the caterpillars are transferred to one-quart containers (five in each) covered by paper towels. The caterpillars form the cocoons attached to the toweling, which Bohlken rolls and packs into boxes of 1,000 each to ship out to customers.
Zoos often glue the cocoons to tree branches so people can watch the butterflies hatch.
Butterfly conservatories that allow people to walk among the flitting, swirling inhabitants have opened in the recent years in Texas, New York and California. Others are planned in North Carolina and Tennessee. Indeed, most states now have some type of butterfly exhibit.
The popularity of such sites helped Bohlken’s business, Monarchs Forever, sell about 45,000 butterflies this year, even though northern weather limits the rearing season to six months.
“Our revenues have completely swung around in the last year from being in the red to being in the black,” Bohlken said. “Next year, our revenues will easily go over $200,000.”
Dunwoody, a veteran of 10 years in the business who raised about 50,000 butterflies last year for zoos and butterfly houses, says the business is “not something you can get into overnight and expect to make a killing.”
Still, Mikula estimates there are about 75 farms and scores of mom-and-pop operations have opened to meet the demand for butterfly releases at weddings and funerals, a controversial practice.
Jeff Glassberg, who heads the North American Butterfly Assn., says the practice should be illegal.
“It spreads disease, results in inappropriate mixing of genetics and confuses migration,” said Glassberg, whose 3,000-member butterfly-watching organization is based in Morristown, N.J.
Bohlken has filled a few orders for wedding releases--he charges about $3 per butterfly for orders of 100 or more--but puts his emphasis on selling to institutions. His largest order to date has been for 10,000 cocoons from a wholesaler who supplies zoos.
“Butterflies are getting to be big business,” Bohlken said.
